I read this article over the weekend that I picked up from Shall Not Be Questioned regarding a chef and his ‘underground bacon’. Just looking at the pictures made my stomach grumble, and it reminded me that I have a smoker and I’m not afraid to use it. So, one of those Bucket List things is to make my own bacon and I plan on doing just that.

So, I’m busy looking for a recipe that sounds the best which means deciding between wet and dry curing, and since I don’t have the ability to cold smoke, something that can do just fine on my Brinkmann electric. Oh, and find some butcher with fresh pork bellies.

Havent tried bacon, but Ive made a good bit of corned beef, pastrami, and ham. I use Morton's Tenderquick Curing Salt. I keep intending on trying the old school way, but the Tenderquick is big help on the reliability front. Also use it to make beef jerky.

I've done about 20 lbs. so far, in 2 batches. I also followed the Ruhlman recipe Shotgunner linked to for one batch. Found this: http://coolmaterial.com/roundup/how-to-make-bacon-from-scratch/and followed it for second batch. I left it in the cure too long (8 days) and it came out too salty, but still good. Picked up a food slicer now; thin-slicing 10 lbs. bacon by hand sucks. By the end I decided I liked really thick sliced bacon just as good as thin. PS- I found the pink cure salt on ebay.

My buddy 45er over at Barrel smoke has done it. I have tried it and it was REALLY good.

He took it from a live pig down to bacon:http://barrelsmoke.blogspot.com/2012/05/goin-whole-hog.htmlhttp://barrelsmoke.blogspot.com/2012/05/makin-bacon.htmlhttp://barrelsmoke.blogspot.com/2012/05/bippity-boppity-bacon.html

I made bacon once, I don't have the recipe off the top of my head but:

First, decide early on if you are doing pink salt (aka Prague Powder) or Morton's Tenderquick. Prague Powder is salt, curing chemicals, and a dye so you don't put it on your popcorn.

Prague Powder #1 is 6% sodium nitrite and 94% salt. #2 adds about 3% sodium nitrate, and drops 3% of the salt. You will want #1 for most things, #2 is for things that will dry cure slowly, like proscutto. IIRC, the nitrite does the cure, and nitrate feeds bugs that convert it to nitrite on a long dry cure.

Having said that I've made a pretty darn good corned beef with potassium nitrate per Alton Brown; my wife's first comment upon tasting it was "(expletives deleted) I am never making the (multiple expletives deleted) stuff from a bag ever again."

Morton's Tenderquick is a mix of salt, sugar, and sodium nitrite, and it's hard to find the exact mix. Or at least it has escaped my Google-fu. So converting recipes from one to the other is not straightforward.

The only complaint about my bacon is, it cooks way differently than normal bacon. Cook low and slow, normal bacon has been pressure cured, so 1/3 the weight is added brine. I have a hard time getting my home bacon to crisp up rather than burn, so I can either have very chewy fat, or I can have burnt offerings.